dai nostri inviati
Photography: Blackmilk Heartworks - Flickr
cover’ for my phone when ‘una copertura’ seems perfectly valid? What’s cool or elegant in either of these two words? If I asked anyone why this was, the answer wasn’t always clear. So I came to my own conclusion, and feel free to disagree.
Ultimately, which language is being used is irrelevant. It happens to be English because that is the language that spread most recently, out of the most recent European empire. As the Dutch, Spanish and French empires all rose and fell before it, so too did the possibility of those languages spreading throughout the world. It also just happens that the USA speaks English. Had the Spanish also managed to colonise North America, who’s to say that they wouldn’t be called ‘Los Estados Unidos’ today? There are enough names in the southwest of the country that hint at the possibility.
The Italian cultural spectrum seems infatuated with the power of American exported culture, the result of which manifests itself most clearly in the adoptions of the English tongue discussed here.
A third example was how Italian youngsters use English on social media and in colloquial speech. On Facebook, you could often expect to come across links that people were sharing that had come from English language sources, or posts actually being written in English. Often, threads or posts that had a higher sense of ‘meaning’ (a motto by which to live, or a phrase for the day) were posted in English. Away from the computer screen, the word ‘super’ was used a lot as a slang way to say ‘molto’. I asked some friends to fill in a survey I compiled for my year abroad essay and in reply to one of my questions, a friend used the words ‘appeal’, ‘audience’ and ‘target’, as if all three meant something more for being written in English.
To an extent, it is very easy to understand this trend. Just as the young Italians I met were using English as a social tool, so too does English use Italian words to be elegant. It just depends on what impression one is trying to give. Take the terminology used in classical music for example. Reading an opera score would be a lot less elegant if, instead of rallentando, we saw ‘getting slower’ or fortissimo was replaced with ‘very loud’. When it got a little less clear to understand was why the smaller, simple words were being swapped for English words. Why did people say ‘t-shirt’ instead of ‘maglietta’? Why was it ‘una
threads or posts that had a higher sense of ‘meaning’ (a motto by which to live, or a phrase for the day) were posted in English
una cover
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